Well, of course I love the main part of the picture! It's a SELFIE by none other than Richard-freaking-Armitage!!

But those cats on the wall in the background? I can't help thinking.... Is it a hidden message?
Is he playing cat and mouse with us? That ginger cat folk art painting looks very familiar to me. Does it have any other significance? Could it be sort of a visual apologia to all us cat-loving RA fans for his infamous dog preferential statement? Does he even look remorseful?

Let's look at those background items more closely...

#1 is very familiar, in fact I thought I once had this same picture as a ceramic tile that I used as a trivet until it broke. But after searching google images for quite some time I have not been able to find out anything about it. But I did find a picture of my old trivet (and it wasn't the same at all!). If anyone has any information about this cat painting - I would be very interested!

I did however, find plenty of other very interesting pictures of orange tabby cats. My favourites were the ones inserted into famous paintings over at Fatcatart blog -- especially (because of my fondness for Monet paintings) this one:

Luckily, I was able to find this picture of the same room where the picture is visible.

Note the Felix the Cat clock has moved. In this picture it is just over the girl's shoulder.

The little figurine between the cat painting and the now visible blue matted photo looks like a cat playing a musical instrument.

From Soundtrack's' Facebook Page

The photo of the figurine is very blurry but it does appear to be a cat playing a bass violin, or could it be -- a cello? Hmmm... Curious and curiouser...RA fans know that Richard has been known to play the cello.

The above photo on the right is more of a mystery. It appears to be a handsome man playing an instrument which I have come to believe is called a Vibraphone. My first impression of the blurry picture was that it was of Elvis (the King) but since my research didn't turn up any evidence that Elvis ever played a vibraphone, I had to look for other options. The best looking vibraphone player I could find was this man Tito Puente, otherwise known as the Mambo King.

Even though RA is also known by his Hobbit film character's nickname of the King Under the Mountain, I knew I was grasping at straws here... I really didn't think his hairline looked correct, and besides where was the cat reference?!! I was going to go with the fact that Jazz musicians are also known as Hepcats... but I wasn't fooling myself. So I kept looking for another good looking vibraphone player.

I think the cat playing the instrument is a figurine from the nursery rhyme-Hey diddle diddle the cat & the fiddle the cow jumped over the moon! I think it's part of a series of nursery rhythm characters that I've seen before.

Thanks so much for all the awesome comments!If you had a laugh, learned something new or enjoyed the music then my post has been successful.If you don't quite get where I was going with this... don't worry -- I didn't really either!I start with something and it leads to something else and I soon get lost for a long while until I finally come up for air and decide to bring it all together somehow (hence the cat herding)!I know I enjoyed myself, and once again, Mr. Armitage has led me to discover more to love about this crazy world we live in. Thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts!